With All Your Heart
If possible, I would spend hours with each of you, separately, in intimate conversation about what Kay and I experienced in Germany. The relevance to each of our healthy, Christian journeys is undeniable, and, because of the tangible expressions of the world-wide expansion of THE Great Awakening, now is the time for us all to have a new grid. I am being sincerely transparent with you in that statement because we witnessed a substantial and transformative ministry of Holy Spirit with the precious and authentic people in Deutschland.
In a written attempt to incapsulate what I am alluding to, here is just one quick illustration:
Our lovely hosts (Kay, pronounced Kai, and Christa) asked us to add an additional meeting because the response to what we were ministering was massive and persuasive. Of course, I agreed quickly for more time to minister… you know me (wink, wink). So, they added a Wednesday night service. There, just as here, a midweek gathering has unique challenges built in. Everyone has a job they have to come from, and to get up early Thursday to get to. Many of the families had kids who had school requirements just like our kids here. There was a large number of people who came two and three hours to the gathering which required train rides, public transport, and even vast kilometers of biking and walking. The heart hunger, the authentic desire, the pure passion compelled them to, “do the hard thing,” and spend the extra money, give up the extra time, maybe even forego a nights sleep… just to be in the room that night.
Jesus said, “if you seek, you will find.” Jesus is faithful and His Word is true… and He did not disappoint.
The room was literally overflowing with people. They ran out of chairs… not just in the sanctuary, but in the entire building. There were people sitting in windowsills (it impacted me deeply because it was Book of Acts kinda stuff) with their children and fixated on what they anticipated Holy Spirit to do in and with them. You can likely imagine how an atmosphere charged with that type of yearning yielded in its spiritual fruit. There were countless physical healings, soul healings, marriage healings, family healings, hope healings, trauma healings, and identity healings. And that is just the healings… the other testimonies are just as radical and humbling. I just received another email from Kay and Christa yesterday morning that the email testimonies are still coming in about all the diverse ways that Jesus encountered people that night. That time was of such exquisite value that we did not get back to our room until nearly midnight, and we were only ten minutes away… imagine the sacrifice for those who came three hours and public transport was shut down for the evening.
Maybe you are reading this and somewhere in the deep genuine recesses of your heart there is a longing for moments like that. Not a church service, not a box to check, not just another meeting, not the same-ole-same-ole… but something, ANYTHING, that is real and life-altering.
For thus says the Lord: After seventy years are completed at Babylon, I will visit you and perform My good word toward you, and cause you to return to this place. For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon Me and go and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart. I will be found by you, says the Lord, and I will bring you back from your captivity…
Jeremiah 29:10-14 NKJV
“All your heart.” All means all, in the Greek and the Hebrew.
Babylon is representative of the place of slavery where the bad choices of the nation damned them to be. It was a prison of their own building… a terrible place of demon gods, cultural debauchery, and societal wickedness inflicting pain on the people of God and their children. The Good Father was giving them an exit strategy…
But if you seek the Lord your God from there, you will find him, if, indeed, you seek him with all your heart and soul.
Deuteronomy 4:29 NET
Now, before you hear that and think disqualifying thoughts sent by your arch-enemy, the condemning accuser, please reconsider my testimony above. God is NO RESPECTER of persons… He is the same in America and in Germany. The hundreds of folks that were touched in the small, rural town in Southern Germany all had lives with stuff-n-things like we do. But, they did the hard thing. They did the self-sacrifice thing… they gave time they did not have, gave money they could not relinquish, gave up the guarded places of their heart in faith, allowed their soul to be stripped naked yet be unashamed, fixed their mental focus while the busy world was screaming demands at them, sat in uncomfortable chairs for hours, and really DID what was necessary to touch just the hem of Jesus’ garment. They were not required to do the impossible thing, they just humbly, eagerly, and willingly did the hard thing. And, true to nature, Jesus’ abundant provision flowed responsively for them and to them.
This Great Awakening will not be experienced by everyone. I say that with near tears, but I say it in truth. Just like when I preach in places outside of that sacred room in Kenzingen, there are scores of people who just bat their eyes at me and the Word in minimal tolerance… some even close their eyes for a blissful nap while this, THIS same Spirit, is presently hovering over them ready and willing to accomplish the, “future and hope,” they long to have.
O LORD, you have searched me and known me!
Psalm 139:1 ESV
I, the Lord, search the heart, I test the mind, even to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his doings.
Jeremiah 17:10 NKJV
It truly is all a matter of the heart.
Kenzingen, Germany was established in 1249 A.D. The Spirit of God waited a long time to touch those hearts, but they reached out in The Year Of Our Lord 2023… and took the gift of grace that was theirs all along.
I have divine expectation for our assembling together Sunday (and every-time we gather… in Grace Groups, in one-on-one discipleship, in Koinonia…), and a deep longing to see this same Jesus have access to your heart and life in transparently new ways.
We then, as workers together with Him also plead with you not to receive the grace of God in vain. For He says:
“In an acceptable time I have heard you, And in the day of salvation I have helped you.”
Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation.
2 Corinthians 6:1-2 NKJV
I love you GREATLY!
Steve
